The Best Thing About Being A Straight White Christian Male

No matter how badly I fuck up my life, no one will expand the blame beyond me. I don’t stand for anyone else. What I do says nothing about anyone but me.

If you’re black, or an immigrant, or a Muslim, or an atheist, or a member of any other minority group? It’s just the opposite. Your problems become symptoms of something wrong with your whole community. No matter that you – an individual – committed the act. No matter that members of other groups have doubtless committed similar acts. Nope. Whatever the crime or embarrassment, it’ll become a launching pad for all kinds of negative generalizations. Some of it will be sanctimonious, covered in “concerns” in the same way gossip is couched as a prayer request in Sunday School. Some of it will be blatantly hostile. But it’ll all be bullshit and it will all make the situation worse for the person who fucked up.

For instance, suppose you’re gay and you’re happily married. Well, you were until your partner ran off with a whore. If you were a straight white Christian male, all you’d have to deal with would be the anger, pain, humiliation, and sorrow of the loss. Because you’re gay, though, in addition to that you’ll have to worry about ending up in the news or on a blog or some other public forum which assholes will use to reinforce their biases: “See! The Gays don’t respect marriage at all!” Even if you’re lucky enough to avoid the news, you still have to deal with all the busybodies in your life who see your pain as an occasion for giving thanks to God, because they think it means you’re no longer gay. You become a symbol, not a person.

That, of course, is the root of the whole problem: Treating people as their class or group rather than individuals. Two people want to commit their lives to each other? Great, let them. The group to which they belong is irrelevant. One of those same two breaks her vow to God and tramples the emotions of her partner and everyone else who loves her? Don’t blame the innocent; let her be faithless by herself.

right about the southern thing. but only for certain failings. no one made any generalizations about mark sanford. but if in addition to cheating on his wife, he beat her, i bet we would have heard about southern violence or something.